Quote from: cclapper on November 16, 2010, 10:54

Quote from: caspixel on November 14, 2010, 18:42

Were you banned as well cclapper?

Apparently I have not been banned from the forums, as I was able to post one this morning. But I expect that thread will be locked very soon.

I took a payout on Sun. am and it left $.17 in my account. Today, I still have $.17 in my account. Either sales are not being reported correctly or my wooyaying-nauseating comment in another thread here has offended the mighty gods and they decided to punish me with no sales, because 2 days with NO downloads has not happened to me since I first started uploading a few years ago! I checked my most downloaded images and they are still showing in the best match as they did before.

November sales (one of amazing last four mouths) are total crap, at least for me.

@Cathy, how are your sales today? I got one just after midnight iStock time and nothing since.
I was wondering if there was some sort of reporting glitch, but one of my CN just said he had a good day yesterday and a good start to today.
My 'test' files are around where they've been for a while in best match and DM is still reporting hundreds of views.

Quote from: cclapper on November 16, 2010, 12:35

OK, there had to have been some sort of glitch (  ) because I went to do a few errands around 11:00. Just got back. Now I have $8.11 in my account. Four downloads from 9:31am, 9:41am, 10:02am and 10:26am. Hmmm. Aren't DL purchases usually recorded instantly on our account?

They are supposed to be, AFAIK.  It's only the bar graph that takes a day to update...

Today in the IS forum I suggested that contributors get together and contract some kind of ombudsman....or advocate. It was deleted by the moderator....which sucks big time. Do any of you photogs with IS know of any conversations or efforts to hire an advocate....someone to watch over our interests? It wouldn't cost much per contributor. Am I crazy or is this a good idea?

I'm not suggesting that IS create this position. I'm saying that we contributors demand this advocate.

Quote from: traveler1116 on November 17, 2010, 10:27

Is there a thread open on IS now that will let the Admins communicate to us what is being done and what the likely time frame for getting this fixed will be?  Just kidding I know the answer....but seriously why haven't there been any announcements on this yet.

There is an open thread here, and I suggest you open a support ticket. I think that they need to be a little more formal about bugs that withhold royalties from contributors (you'll see I've said that in the thread

I don't know if they will close my support ticket (as they did the others), pointing at the forum thread with a promise as a "resolution". If they do, I'm going to open another one.

My support ticket did get closed - very politely and empathetically but still closed.

So I had a read of the artist supply agreement to see what it said about payment timing. The exclusive agreement (which I think is the same in this respect as the general one) says:

In response to a written request, iStockphoto will endeavor to make payment of fees in respect of purchased downloads of Accepted Exclusive Content on a monthly basis on or about the 15th day of the month following the purchase of Accepted Exclusive Content, except when sales reporting from a distribution partner is delayed, in which case payments will be made in the month following the date such sale is reported, provided such fees aggregate a minimum of US$100, failing which fees owing will be retained until they exceed such minimum.

Seems pretty loosey-goosey in that it doesn't even include the word "reasonable" with endeavor and says nothing about what happens if they blow the deadline.

My new ticket requests that they compute my withheld royalty and pay it to me regardless of whether they fix the code on the site that computes El royalties. They want to tie those two (and I can see that it'd be less work for contributor relations to wait until they fix the code to do the back payments) but I see no reason they need to be.

The agreement says request in writing, so my ticket is a written request to be paid. I would hope it'd be sooner, but I want to start the clock ticking so I can complain again after December 15th if they haven't paid.

It's not Joy's fault that this mess is happening, and I feel bad that I'm making work for contributor relations staff who likewise aren't to blame for this either.  I think it's important to do whatever we can to ensure we get paid promptly.

It's not a ton of money in my case, but I guess my sense-of-injustice button got pushed big time by their cavalier attitude to paying us.

It doesn't make sense to pay them before they fix the code, because then, they'll be having to do special calculations over and over instead of just once.

I just don't know why it is taking so long to fix.

My support ticket did get closed - very politely and empathetically but still closed.

So I had a read of the artist supply agreement to see what it said about payment timing. The exclusive agreement (which I think is the same in this respect as the general one) says:

In response to a written request, iStockphoto will endeavor to make payment of fees in respect of purchased downloads of Accepted Exclusive Content on a monthly basis on or about the 15th day of the month following the purchase of Accepted Exclusive Content, except when sales reporting from a distribution partner is delayed, in which case payments will be made in the month following the date such sale is reported, provided such fees aggregate a minimum of US$100, failing which fees owing will be retained until they exceed such minimum.

Seems pretty loosey-goosey in that it doesn't even include the word "reasonable" with endeavor and says nothing about what happens if they blow the deadline.

Quote from: jsnover on November 18, 2010, 15:55

My support ticket did get closed - very politely and empathetically but still closed.

So I had a read of the artist supply agreement to see what it said about payment timing. The exclusive agreement (which I think is the same in this respect as the general one) says:

In response to a written request, iStockphoto will endeavor to make payment of fees in respect of purchased downloads of Accepted Exclusive Content on a monthly basis on or about the 15th day of the month following the purchase of Accepted Exclusive Content, except when sales reporting from a distribution partner is delayed, in which case payments will be made in the month following the date such sale is reported, provided such fees aggregate a minimum of US$100, failing which fees owing will be retained until they exceed such minimum.

Seems pretty loosey-goosey in that it doesn't even include the word "reasonable" with endeavor and says nothing about what happens if they blow the deadline.

All iStock's 'commitments' to its contributers are very loosely worded with words like 'reasonable' which have no legal definition. Yet our obligations to them are cast iron, (if not always crystal-clear).